The lottery is a great game often played by many members of the family. Just like many bingo games the main object of the game is simply to pick the right numbers. If you're playing the national lottery in the UK then you are playing a 6/49 lottery draw. So you are if you are in Canada. This simply means you get to chose 6 numbers from a choice of 49. In Switzerland its 6/45 and in New Zealand its 6/40. The differences allow for how many people the organisers think will buy the tickets and therefore win the jackpot.

Prize monies are distributed differently throughout. In New York for instance, 70% goes to the jackpot and if you get 5+bonus (pretty difficult), you get a measly $10,000!
There is a consistent theme however, they all take around 50% out of the pool for "good" causes.

The UK lottery is a 6/59 system, called 659 in other countries. Each six ball combination is unique and there are 45,057,474 of them.

You would be right in thinking that any combination of numbers is as likely to come up on draw night as any other. So therefore there is no point in making a special point of using systems or checking numbers that haven't come up for a while, unless that process adds to your enjoyment.

Question: So is there anything we can do? Well the answer is yes, there is something that you can do to maximize the money you win when you win.

A crazy day in January 1995 when 133 people won the jackpot meant they picked up a measly £122,510 each. This was no fluke, it was because the numbers fell into a regular pattern on the lottery form, a pattern that people use to create their six numbers in a flash at the side of the terminal.

This gives us a clue as to what to do and its a trick that professional gamblers use all the time to gain an advantage in any system where a pool of money gets distributed to a few winners. (like betting on horses) Camelot rather strangely refuses to publish details of players choices but we can get a good understanding of players habits from snippets that they have released and from lotteries around the world.

Basically, people are very lazy when creating an original set of numbers. For instance, some players chose the sequence 1,2,3,4,5,6 in the belief that no one else would think of such a crazy thing. But more than 10,000 tickets are bought with that combination every weekend!!! If it ever comes up, those lucky winners will have won around £1000. Just about enough to buy that gun and point it to their heads.

Many other sequences have way above average subscription. Last weeks numbers, last weeks plus or minus one, consecutive numbers, equally spaced numbers, famous peoples' birth dates, nice patterns, etc....... .

Top Tips

1. Go against all those things mentioned above and try and include high numbers, especially above 31 which rules out most dates from getting in. It won't just benefit you on the jackpot, but when there is a must win lotto draw and you match 3, 4, 5 or 5+bonus then your payouts will be that much more than average when no one wins the jackpot, which is quite often. Happy hunting.

2. Play on the must payout 5th rollover only. Your £2 ticket will be much closer to the true equity in your ticket.

If you want have a game of your own without giving money away to the lost causes, I mean good causes, then you can. Try running a paris-mutual pool amongst your friends, like a mini lottery. Its easy and you can adjust the game to suit the number of players. Here's how;

• First, you don't need to know exactly how many people are playing but a rough guide will do.
• Second, you don't need to know how much they are going to play for, but for sense make the minimum bet £1 and the maximum £10.
• Third, decide who is going to run the thing and split the pool and make the decisions.

And now to the game:

Each player decides how many people are going to win the Jackpot on draw night and writes that number with their name on paper (Note: Zero is a number). Fold it. Put the amount bet on the outside of the folded paper. Show the amount written to operator, pay them and put the paper in the draw box..

When the number of jackpot winners is declared, open the box and see who got it right. (If no one, roll it over or give them their money back) If there's one winner, they get it all. If there's two or more, you split the pool pro-rata according to the original bet size.

Now to Jazz it up, you can allow betting (by the original players) after the draw has been made for about ten minutes (so they can't find out the result). This gives people the chance to use their heads and think how 'unusual' the draw numbers are. Good Luck. Also, the whole thing can be done after the draw (10mins!).

(If there's a lot of people, like 50 or more, then work with the number of bonus prize winners)

• (16.7)The Arts Councils of England, Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland
• (16.7).The Sports Councils of England, Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland
• (16.7)The National Lottery Charities Board
• (16.7)The National Heritage Memorial Fund
• (33.3) New Opportunities Fund/Nesta

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